“Welcome everyone as if you are welcoming Christ.”
Benedictine Credo
Hard to live sometimes when you are with the people with whom this should be the easiest– family. On Thanksgiving, or any holiday where there is a gathering of extended family, we truly are thankful for each other. However, those little things that draw more attention than the bigger truths separate us from that thankfulness so easily spoken.
Today I wait. Others peoples’ schedules and sensibilities about how the day unfolds don’t always match my ways especially when I am someplace else. The truth is that here, in someone else’s home, it’s not my ways that matter.
To have the patience and insight to see the goodness of God at work in other people’s lives is grace. To understand how that goodness can be nourishing and nourished by my honoring their presence is a gift.
The lesson comes again for me, to meet this day with openness. To welcome another person means that I am open to other ways of seeing the world. There isn’t just “one story” but a continual story that changes moment by moment.
Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
This works for paying attention to people too, even those we hold so closely that it obscures this expanded and liberating view.
Attentive to Joy 